Increasing Role Of Technology In Medicine Examined

Under the headline “Patients Lose When Doctors Can’t Do Good Physical Exams,” Kaiser Health News (5/21, Boodman) offers an 1,800-word examination of an “increasingly commonplace” phenomenon “as medicine becomes more technology-driven: the waning ability of doctors to use a physical exam to make an accurate diagnosis.” The piece explains that crucial information that can be gleaned from simple observation has been largely “supplanted by a dizzying array of sophisticated, expensive tests.”